Thought Outdanced: The Motif of Dancing in Yeats and Joyce

Dancing is as old as humanity. It has always been a way of expressing intense emotions and indicating the influence of transcendental powers. At the beginning of human history the individual and the world formed an organic unity, but as a result of social development this original state ceased to exist. Dancing can restore that unity and reabsorb the Dancer into the Universe. For William Butler Yeats and James Joyce, who differ from one another in so many respects, dancing and the figure of the dancer became important symbols. Apart from the detailed analysis of the works, this book offers a cultural-historical access to the characteristic productions of the fin-de-sicle period, recalling the performances of Loie Fuller, Isadora Duncan, Vaslav Nijinski, Anna Pavlova, and the other famous or ill-famed dancers. For the two Irish artists the dancer, balancing on the borderlines of everyday reality and the transcendental world, of body and soul, of the relationship of the masses and the a